Ostrich Behaviour

Washington Post – Christian groups in India on Monday demanded a ban on a Bollywood movie depicting a sexual relationship between a Catholic priest and a woman half his age, saying it hurt their sentiments.

I don’t know if it is true tht ostriches put their heads into a hole when faced with danger. The story goes that the ostrich thinks that if it can’t see the predator the predator can’t see it.

Whether true or not, we humans seem to have made it our favored method of “not seeing the predator”.

Sex, drugs, religious violence, robbery, murder, intolerance and so on are a part of society today as much as it were say a score years ago. But cable television and the internet has brought these into our homes and thereby into our lives.

A schoolboy filming his sexual escapades with a classmate in far of Delhi now is as much news in Chennai as is the unfortunately running down of a young girl by drunkards on a Chennai main road.

Art works in two ways. One, it mirrors the society it exists in and two, it tells us how we could be. Putting a ban on art for mirroring the truth is like putting one’s head into a hole and wishing away the problem being addressed.

School teachers having sex with students, priests having sex with devotees, is happening. These are facts not someone’s flight of fantasy. The problem is not with a movie or book that shows a priest having sex with a younger woman. Priests have been having sex with their flock from time immemorial, it is only today that the news really travels out of the village or city where it is happening.

This is not to say that all priests and all teachers are frolicking away. Far from it, it is only a handful, but the fact remains that they are there. To ban a movie on the subject is to wish the issue away. That is definitely not the way to handle the situation.